Robert Nozick: Property, Justice, and the Minimal State (Key Contemporary Thinkers)

Robert Nozick's Anarchy, kingdom, and Utopia is likely one of the works which dominate modern debate in political philosophy. Drawing on conventional assumptions linked to individualism and libertarianism, Nozick mounts a strong argument for a minimum "night-watchman" kingdom and demanding situations the perspectives of many modern philosophers, such a lot particularly John Rawls.

This publication is the 1st full-length learn of Nozick's paintings and of the debates to which it has given upward thrust. Wolff situates Nozick's paintings within the context of present debates and examines the traditions that have prompted his notion. He then significantly reconstructs the foremost arguments of Anarchy, nation, and Utopia, targeting Nozick's doctrine of rights, his derivation of the minimum country, and his Entitlement thought of Justice. Wolff topics Nozick's reasoning to rigorous scrutiny and argues that, regardless of the seductive simplicity of Nozick's libertarianism, it's, finally, neither believable nor fully coherent. The publication concludes via assessing Nozick's position in modern political philosophy.

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Additional resources for Robert Nozick: Property, Justice, and the Minimal State (Key Contemporary Thinkers)

Thus a desire to keep one’s hands ‘clean’ would lead one to refuse to hand over the judge. For Nozick this instruction to keep your hands clean is part of the doctrine of facet constraints, yet the side-constraint doctrine has a additional element. I should still now not violate rights even to reduce my personal destiny violation of rights. Suppose, for example, I am a kleptomaniac whose condition can be controlled only by the use of drugs. If I do not take my medicine today, I will commit many acts of theft tomorrow.

Those, for example, who wish to live in a certain style of rugged self-sufficiency, like the Amish farmers of Pennsylvania, may find that taxation to supply goods for which they have no desire makes it impossible to meet their financial obligations without working for others. hence the extra vast one’s duties to the state, the much less possible yes life-styles turn into. Equally, a non-minimal country might come to a decision to limit sure social, sexual, or economic practices and thereby rule out styles of life thought desirable by some of its citizens.

This involves seeing oneself as part of a network of differing human relations based on mutual affection and mutual support. Even further removed from Nozick’s conception is the idea that a fully human life is one which is, at least in part, lived for others. 18 If either of these features have been idea relevant then an solely various view of rights may possibly good spring forth – one related to tasks to relief others as good as the correct to obtain reduction. Or certainly it may perhaps be concluded that taking the concept of ‘right’ as fundamental in political philosophy is mistaken, and that political philosophy should build on the concept of ‘human social nature’.

So Nozick cannot claim a Lockean foundation for his view of natural rights. Kantian Foundations and the Meaning of Life If there is no Lockean foundation for Nozick’s theory of rights, what, then, is its foundation? In Anarchy, State, and Utopia this question, surprisingly, is slightly addressed, even notwithstanding Nozick recognizes the undesirability of failing to provide a ‘completely accurate statement of the ethical historical past together with the targeted assertion of the ethical thought and its underlying foundation.